


Hood and Zip Ties

by ThanksForListening



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Missing Scene, its exactly what the title implies, sex implied but not explicit, what happened during (part of) the 10 hours in the CIA safehouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 13:10:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21374680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThanksForListening/pseuds/ThanksForListening
Summary: a glimpse at how root and shaw spent some of that 10 hours stuck in the safe house in 3x06
Relationships: Root | Samantha Groves/Sameen Shaw
Comments: 5
Kudos: 71





	Hood and Zip Ties

**Author's Note:**

> i've been rewatching POI and if i have to singlehandedly wake this fandom up to appease my own obsession then so be it. also i wrote this and posted it in like 3 days so if its a little clunky u can blame me being impatient lol

If Root took one more bite of that apple, Shaw was gonna kill her, mission be damned. 

It had been ten minutes. They’d been at the drop site for _Ten. Minutes._ And they had another nine hours and fifty before the machine could send them in blind to wherever it was they were going next, details of which Root either couldn’t or refused to disclose. 

“Do you have to eat that so loudly?” She groaned as Root took another bite. The other woman just looked over at her, wearing a smirk that drove Shaw mad. 

“Is it bothering you?” She asked, somehow mocking her and flirting with her at the same time. 

“What are we even supposed to do for ten hours? Your machine couldn’t have set us up with a tv? Or some vodka?”

“If you want entertainment,” Root stood up from the table and walked over to Shaw, “I’m sure I could think of something.” She tried to wink, and Shaw laughed as she closed both eyes. Guess a supercomputer could only teach you so much. 

“Nice try,” Shaw said, “but you should know that lines like that don’t really work on me.”

“I was merely suggesting we play a game.”

Shaw stared at her blankly. “A game?”

Root sat down on the floor, crossed her legs like a kindergartener. She nodded toward Shaw, then sighed when she didn’t sit down. “You and I both have a unique ability to lie and determine when others are lying. I say we put that skill set to the test.”

“And how would we do that?”

“Easy. We switch off telling each other something about ourselves. Other person has to guess if it’s the truth or a lie.”

Shaw stared at her. Normally, she’d laugh at the thought of spending her time playing dumb mind games with Root, but it wasn’t looking like she had many other options. Plus, she thought as she sat down, she could get something out of this. Leverage, for later. 

“Shall we begin?” Root said with a devilish smile, and Shaw held up a hand. 

“How do I know you don’t have your computer girlfriend telling you stuff about me?”

“Scout’s honor?” Shaw gave her a look, and Root sighed, taking her headphones out and placing her phone on the ground in front of her. “And, for the record? She’s not my girlfriend. Or a computer.”

“Whatever. Who’s going first?”

Root sat for a minute, wearing a smirk on her face and fire in her eyes. “I lost my virginity in a phone booth.”

“Oh, we’re starting there, are we?” Shaw said, before shaking her head. “Lie.”

Root shrugged. “It wasn’t my first time, but it was much more exciting.”

Shaw had a feeling Root expected her to ask about her real first time, to prove that she was interested. Instead, Shaw said “I have eight bugs split between Harold, John, and Bear.”

“Truth.” Shaw nodded. “How many of them are on Bear?”

“Four,” She said with a smile. “He’s the most important one. Can’t take any chances.”

Root looked at her, and she couldn’t quite decipher what feelings lay underneath that expression, so she did what she did best: she ignored it. “You’re up.”

They went back and forth a few rounds, each of them getting tricked once or twice, before Root said, “How about we up the stakes a little bit?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she drawled, “let’s add a little bit of excitement to this friendly competition.”

“And how do you suggest we do that? I don’t know about you, but I didn’t really get a chance to grab my wallet while you were kidnapping me and driving me all over town.”

“Who said anything about money?” She gave her that grin again, the one that was starting to set off her instincts, although _which_ instincts was yet to be determined. “For every one we get wrong,” Root continued, “we have to take off a piece of clothing. Last one dressed wins.”

“Did you learn how to flirt from a fourteen year old boy?” Shaw asked, but the competitive fire in her was already burning, and she had never been one to turn down a challenge. “Fine. Whatever. It’s your turn.”

“I got my first kill when I was fifteen.”

“Lie,” Shaw said. She wasn’t surprised when Root shook her head. Part of her had known, and she wasn’t quite sure why she hadn’t listened to her gut. Wishful thinking, maybe. She reached down and took off her socks, making a face at Root as she did. 

“Didn’t have much of a choice, but at least it showed me something else I was good at.” Root had a far-off expression on her face, and showed no sign of elaborating any further, so Shaw didn’t press. Even though she wanted to, a thought that surprised her.

“My mother still calls me every Sunday,” Shaw kept the game going, or tried to, anyway. Root looked at her in either awe or confusion or both, and Shaw felt an ounce of satisfaction that her distraction had worked, had pulled Root from whatever memory she’d started to spiral into.

“Lie.” 

This time it was Shaw who shook her head. “It’s a number that doesn’t belong to me, hasn’t in a while. Not sure if she knows that.”

“What _does_ she know?” Root asked as she took her shirt off, and Shaw had to force her eyes from lingering on her exposed torso. 

“About this? Nothing. The official story is that I never existed, and the unofficial story is that I’m dead, but I don’t think she believes that. I think it’s why she keeps calling — to let me know she’s still waiting.”

“Are you ever going to call her back?”

Shaw hesitated. She hadn’t told anyone about her mom, hadn’t expected to tell Root tonight, but something about the way she looked at her, about what and where they were, made her feel...calm. Maybe it was the way Root was sitting: cross legged on the floor, God disregarded for the sake of integrity in a game that didn’t matter. Maybe it was because of how vulnerable she looked, her shirt crumpled on the ground behind her, sympathetic curiosity in her eyes. Whatever the reason, when she asked her question, Shaw answered. 

“Didn’t think I would ever get a chance, not before I got this job. But now...I don’t know. It might hurt her more, to see what I’ve become, then to leave her wondering if I did die out there, alone, with no record that I even existed.”

“Sounds like you still care about her.”

“It’s your turn, Root.” 

“Fine.” Root looked at her, didn’t let her look away as she said “I’ve only ever cared about one person in my life. Not counting Her, of course.”

Shaw hesitated. She knew the answer — she just wasn’t sure she believed it. 

“True.”

Root nodded, and Shaw could see there was sadness in her eyes, but she didn’t know what to do with it. “What was her name?” She asked, taking a shot in the dark that Root’s silence was an invitation to ask questions, to do what she’d done. It seemed as if the rules of their game were shifting, and Shaw wasn’t sure she knew how to play anymore.

“How do you know it was a girl?” Shaw raised her eyebrow, and Root laughed, just a little. She found that it didn’t annoy her as much as everything else Root did. “Her name was Hannah,” she continued, “I was thirteen and in love with her.”

“I’m sure that went over well in Nowhere, Texas.” This time it was Root who raised an eyebrow at her. “What? You’re not the only one who’s done their research.”

“I didn’t stay long enough to find out,” she said, “and Hannah never found out, either.”

“I know,” Shaw said. When Root looked at her, she elaborated. “I read the boys’ file on you. I know what happened. I only asked because I thought you wanted me to.” Shaw shook her head. “She didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” Root asked. “Sorry?” What should have been a rude and insulting question, even for someone like her, was altered by the genuity in her voice. It compelled her to answer, instead of ignore it. 

“Honestly? I’m not sure. I think so. I don’t think a kid should ever die, and just because I don’t care for people doesn’t mean I don’t know that it hurts when you do.”

“You don’t care for people? Ever?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and a handful of faces flashed in front of her eyes. She‘d deflected the question once already, before Root could even ask it, but for reasons unknown to her, she didn’t this time. She wondered if her conversation with Gen had any influence on her sudden desire to keep talking. “I think I cared for my parents. Pretty sure I cared about Cole. There was a girl when I was a kid — annoying thing who wouldn’t leave me alone. I didn’t get it at the time, but I think I cared about her, too. In my own way.”

“Do you care about Harold and John?”

“I guess,” Shaw answered. “It’s complicated. I don’t want anything to happen to them, but I’d survive if something did. Not sure if that counts as caring.”

“Do you care about the kid? The one you saved a few days ago? Gen?”

“Maybe. I like her — she’s got good instincts, even if she doesn’t know quite what to do with them yet. And she means well — she’d fit in with Harold’s group of saviors if she were ten years older. But is that caring about her? If something happened to her, it would be upsetting, mostly because she’s so young. At least Harold and John have lived a life, you know?”

“Do you care about me?” Her tone didn’t change, but Shaw could feel a shift. She suspected Root had only asked the other questions to get to this one, had set the whole game up so that Shaw wouldn’t lie to her. Not that she would have anyway, but at least now she knew Root could call her out on it if she tried. So she told her the truth. 

“I don’t know. Maybe if you stop kidnapping me to go on secret missions, I’d be able to find out.”

“You’re saying you don’t like our missions?”

“I didn’t say that,” she kept surprising herself with the words that came out of her mouth, and the fact that they were true. “If we could do without the taser next time, though, that might smooth things over.”

“I thought you liked that kind of thing,” Root said, and Shaw usually couldn’t stand the shameless flirting, but she found she didn’t want to stop it. Not tonight, at least. Not yet. 

“Taser is a bit overkill. Not enough pleasure involved. Those zip ties on the other hand...I could think of a handful of ways we could put those to good use.”

“We?”

Shaw just shrugged. “Unless you want to keep playing our game instead.”

“That’s up to you, Sameen. It’s your turn.”

Shaw felt the familiar heat deep in her gut and smirked. One night didn’t mean anything, anyway. “I’ve never thought about this before,” she said, and she had her shirt off before Root could even finish saying the word “Lie.”

Shaw waited a minute, let Root look her over, before whispering, “Your turn.”

Root pushed her phone to the side, reached for the extra zip ties that had fallen off the table behind her, leaned in closer until there was just enough space between them for her to look Shaw in the eye as she said, “I have no idea what’s about to happen.”

Shaw eliminated the distance between them, and spoke as their mouths collided. “Lie.”

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably the closest ill ever get to writing smut lol. if i get ambitious i might write another one of them pillow talking after this but we'll see ive got other ideas too. u can hit me up on tumblr if u want @thanks--for--listening. also kudos and comments are my favorite thing ever so feel free to validate me if u want. also root's alive.


End file.
